The Morlocks, who have demonstrated links to several eatings of Eloi victims, are believed to have purchased a shiny, chrome machine from an arms dealer following his wondrously dazzling appearance somewhere in the forest. An eyewitness eavesdropping on the transaction heard the traveler retort, "They didn't think it would work. I told them it would work. I'd like to see Sir Gregorius's face now, muff."

Despite cries of unilateralism, the Eloi are going ahead with the search for this "time machine." The traveling stranger was held in a detention facility after he claimed to be unable to help with the expedition to the underground, citing having "a smidgen too few matches." In a press conference, the press secretary said, in his native, cooing language, "This time machine would pose a grave threat to our nation's safety. With the Morlocks machining the times, we'd... where are my soft linens?"

Jeremy Irons has come up to feast on our flesh.

The Eloi government is reluctant to surrender the economic boost that the Morlocks provide. The occasional human sacrifice is considered a small price to pay. "We would lose our sweetie-things," one commented. Advocacy groups have put forth other reasons. "Just because they're smelly, they live underground, and they eat people, it's no reason to go racial profiling."

Some fair-faced pundits on the left are criticising the Elois' trading relationship with the Morlocks. "We want to see our society cut itself off from the decadent machinery of the underground," one voice in the outcry said. "Only then will the terrible devouring of our people on Eloi soil cease."

Other intellectual journalists have drawn parallels between the Morlocks and the lower-class workers of the Industrial Revolution of the distant past. "It's a bunch of proletariat nonsense," spat Joe-Hanna in an interview. "Reading Tolkien's work in the positronic library, it gets you to wondering, 'What's with the class-struggle bent to fantasy literature?'"H. G. Wells denied the connection.